It’s Freezing in Grímsstaðir, Despair

Jón Thoroddsen

Traduzido por: Christopher Crocker

Obra de arte Alyssa Berris

It’s freezing in Grímsstaðir

I lie in my bed
in good spirits. It’s freezing in Grímsstaðir, 20 degrees below. Slowly the
last lump of peat has turned to ash, there isa hay shortage and nothing for the animals to graze on, the
priest won’t help, he has enough to do. They should have been better prepared.

Twenty degrees below in Grímsstaðir will
bring forth twenty stories. The periodical will make for easy reading.

I get dressed, go out and spot the cobbler.
I run over to him, and spin him towards me:

It’s freezing in Grímsstaðir, 20 degrees
below.

He holds up the paper and points.

Two degrees, he says, and continues on his
way.

I ask you, oh cobbler.

Have you come into the world in order to
bear witness to the truth? Where is your eyewitness account? Who urged you to
be truthful?

You poor devil. Twenty men are writing
stories today. Twenty men who believe that it is 20 below in Grímsstaðir.

You have a great responsibility.

I thank you, cobbler. When the periodical
comes out, I’ll become a critic. I will write:

The paper and the printing are of the best
quality. The workmanship is impeccable, and the books are generally inviting –
very suitable to be given as gifts. But it should be said that the stories are
founded upon a misunderstanding: On the day in question it was only two degrees
below in Grímsstaðir.

Despair

Hope was my wife, but reality cuckolded me.
I hate it.

I walk up to the churchyard, leading a small
child. We come to a burial chamber that I have built myself. And I speak to the
child that is not my own:

Hold my hand, because inside this chamber
there is not even a hint of a light. Don’t trip over your siblings’ coffins.
Before long, they will rise up and haunt me. Be a good child and sit here on
the corner of the coffin next to me. I want to try to amuse myself for a brief
moment.

Your mother is gone. She was a
brightly-dressed girl, who smiled. She is never coming back.

The last time she came she led you by the
hand.

Kiss daddy, she said.

I jumped up, and clenched my fist:

She is not mine she belongs to him – the one
I hate.

How should I know, she asked.

Whore, I screamed.

You take the child with you. She will
comfort you when I'm gone. And she smiled, like she was performing an act of
charity.

When you are gone, I said, and hid my face
in my arms.

She is never coming back, and our children lie
in these coffins. Before long, they will rise up and haunt me.

You are an odd child. You don’t stroke, you
scratch. You don’t kiss, you bite. And your weeping is cold laughter.

All the same I love you – love you for the
sake of your mother, who is gone.

Jón Thoroddsen

Jón Thoroddsen was born
in Ísafjörður, in the Vestfirðir (West fjords) of Iceland, on February 18,
1898. He died in Copenhagen at the age of 26 after having been struck by a streetcar.
In his lifetime he published a book of poetry, Flugur (Flies) in 1922, as well as several other plays, poems and
stories.

Christopher Crocker

Christopher Crocker is a doctoral student at Háskóli Íslands (The
University of Iceland), studying medieval Icelandic literature. He was born in
Newfoundland, Canada.